Log in

View Full Version : Good ol' fashion symbolism. :D!



Hello World
10-14-2006, 07:25 PM
Can someone please hook me up with a list of the major symbols? Sure I could go through again and search for then, butmy bother when I have you guys? I have the obvious ones, Rose bush, A, Pearl, any others, maybe not so popular? I need all I can get to write about. D:

Thanks guys. <3

cassiope
11-06-2006, 06:19 AM
You have to look at the places and what they represent. For example, there is a lot of dualism in the novel 'forest=wildness - the puritan community/ town=strict rules, conforming into a mold' What do Hesterst clothes symbolize (think about the cap in the forest- scene with Dimmsdale).

Lingerie Alley
05-24-2009, 12:16 PM
In studying the sciences and engineering, we learn that R is the symbol for radius. And electric current. And the gas constant in pV=nRT. V is both volume and velocity. And so it goes. Evidently scientists developing all this nomenclature began to realize that a single symbol should not represent too many variables or constants, so they started using Greek symbols. That was fine for a while, but pretty quickly we came to the point where sigma represents, what, maybe _twelve_ different things?

So why did we stop with the Greek alphabet? Why not incorporate characters from Hebrew, Cyrillic, Hangul, simplified Kanji, etc., even re-assigning some of those that are currently over-used, until each symbol represents one thing and one thing only.
Lingerie Alley (http://www.lingerie-alley.com)

Wilde woman
05-26-2009, 03:43 PM
The meteor. And, as cassiope said, the forest.

Here's a nice discussion of symbols in the novel: http://www.shmoop.com/literary-device/literature/nathaniel-hawthorne/the-scarlet-letter/symbols-imagery-allegory.html

It also mentions the Custom House.